Prior to
your publishing
an article that perpetuates the myth of "deadbeat dads" perhaps it
would
have been smart to do a little research into what the causes are of
this
so called phenomena, "deadbeat dads".

First of
all, the term
"deadbeat dads" is derogatory and a misnomer. The term should be
"beatdead dads". When a man can have up to sixty percent of his income
taken by the child support collection agencies, what is there left for
him to live on. After the child support determination, it is
frequently
the man in the divorce who then is forced to pay the attorney fees for
the ex-wife, guardian ad litem
fees,
counseling fees, and so on. That could be one reason why most men
today
are going into the Family Court system as pro se, without an attorney.

Your article
states that
men frequently get awarded shared parenting or joint custody.
That
is true. What you have failed to bring up is that men are
alienated
from their children by the mother, and the courts refuse to force the
ex-wife
to adhere to the visitation and custody schedules. Women are
allowed
to take their children and move away from the father, and the courts
refuse
to stop it.

My husband has
not seen his
children in over 5 years, yet the court does nothing to enforce the
visitation,
nor change the court order for visitation since his ex-wife picked up
and
left for Lubbock, Texas with two days notice. Why is there no term for
these mother that encourage and commit Parental Alienation Syndrome,
such
as "malevolent moms". Is it because once a women becomes a mother
she is automatically relegated to the status of madonna, no matter what
else she has done?

The frequently
cited statistics
from the 1970's that state that a man's standard of living goes up
after
divorce, and a women's goes down is not true. Karen DeCrow,
former
President of Now, has stated that the data used to come up with those
statistics
was skewed, and presented a false picture of what really happens to men
and women in divorce.

The Florida Dept.
of Revenue
has statistics that state that over 70% of men pay their child
support.
But when women are ordered to pay child support, less then 5% of those
pay anything. Dept. of Revenue in Florida does not enforce or
prosecute
these women. Is this a clear cut case of gender bias?

Florida has
created a Blue
Ribbon panel to study and reform the child support guidelines, as they
have been determined to be to harsh and onerous on the men ordered to
pay.
The panels recommendations will be taking effect in the year 2001.

As a second wife,
my children
are suffering, while the ex sends her kids to a $6,000 a year summer
Camp,
Blue Star in North Carolina, so that she can go to France and Germany,
as she does every summer. She also managed to buy a brand new
car,
while we drive one 6 year old car that we both use to get to work.

You have also
failed to address
the issues of men paying for children that are not theirs. In
most
states, if a child is born during marriage, then the mother's husband
becomes
the legal father, and at the time of divorce is forced to pay child
support
and other costs for a child that is not his, that was conceived during
an adulterous affair, and in most cases, the cuckolded male providing
child
support finds out a few years after the divorce that this child who he
is forced to support, but has had little or no contact with is not his
biological child.

It might behoove
your staff,
and particularly the writers of this derogatory article to spend a few
days as observers in the Family Court systems around the country to see
what really is happening. If you perform this one little act of
finding
out what is really taking place, you would have to retract the article
on "deadbeat dads" and apologize to a whole gender and their second
wives.

The way to solve
this crisis
in child support is:

1.
To create fair and equal guidelines as to how the income, assets and
money
is to be figured in making child support determinations.

2.
To ensure that both parents have equal time with their children in the form of
shared parenting
or rotating custody, and having the courts enforce
their order
for such.

3.
To ensure that the man is not saddled with paying for children that are not his
by having
standardized DNA testing in any child support, custody, or divorce
action,
and to allow men who have been victims of paternity fraud to be relived
of their child support obligations, and to get restitution for all
moneys
paid.

4.
To take the "business" out of Family Court, and change it from the
adversarial
process that exists today. If Family Court did not create major
financial
gains for attorneys, judges, and all the surrounding items, divorce,
parenting,
and even child support would benefit.

In closing, if the
Family Court
System was truly interested in the child, and not just the financial
aspects,
we would create a system where Mommy and Daddy are civil to
each
other, were every child will have access to both their parents, and
where
the best interest of the children would come first.

Nadine
G. Mendelsohn-Ziskind

If you would like
any additional
information, or case numbers ofpost-divorce
litigation
in South Florida, please contact me at: